


paradigm shift: a triptych

by hockeydyke



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, External homophobia also, Fights, Food Issues, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Social Media, TLDR: Bitty has a breakdown, Year Four
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-08-07 07:11:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16403723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hockeydyke/pseuds/hockeydyke
Summary: Halloween will be Bitty and Jack’s first major public appearance as a couple, since Bitty had missed family skate at the beginning of the season because he’d had to attend a little media day of his own for Samwell. So yes, while they’ve both answered plenty of questions since they first kissed at center ice, they haven’t actually done so together yet. The media is going to eat this right up. That’s why this has to be perfect.That's why Bitty has to be perfect.--Or, falling apart and coming back together again: the fic.





	1. down this road again

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very self-indulgent fic. Sometimes you just gotta write what you need to read. All three chapter titles are based on Neck Deep lyrics, which tells you a lot about the general mood. It gets better at the end, but it's going to be very rough in the meantime.
> 
> This is also my first time incorporating multimedia elements into a fic. Some of my favorite stories do this, so I'm excited to branch out and try it. Let me know what you think, and if there are any readability or accessibility issues with that.
> 
> Please pay attention to the tags! More will likely be added for the following chapters. Also, let me know if there's anything I haven't tagged that you would like me to add. For this chapter: non-graphic emetophobia tw toward the end starting with "It's enough to trigger..." and lasting for the next three paragraphs.

_Don’t let me go down this road again_  
_We both know where this ends_  
_In a storm of feeling, I’m so unappealing_ _  
I can’t play these games_

(from A Part of Me, Neck Deep)

It all starts with a frantic early-morning Twitter clean.

Well-- it actually starts earlier than that, when the Falconers’ front office first announces their first ever Halloween charity event, and Bitty checks his schedule and finds that, yes, he is free that night and can attend with Jack.

Maybe it starts even earlier than that. Maybe it all began the night after the cup win in June, when Bitty had first excused himself to the bathroom amidst the drunken revelry of Jack’s apartment and sat on the closed toilet seat for nearly half an hour as he privated all his social media and deleted a few recent tweets that came across as particularly embarrassing. Maybe it was when he realized that, private or not, once people found his social accounts, they’d be able to see his profile pictures. He quickly changed all of them to a nice selfie he’d taken before this year’s team banquet, where he’s wearing his suit and looks okay, he thinks. It’s better than the photo he’d had before, which showed him dancing at a Haus party in a tank top and denim cutoffs and looking a little messy.

It’s possible that it started even earlier than that, in high school when Bitty started wearing the same boring jeans and button down shirts every day because they were perfectly unnoticeable, or in junior high when he’d change into the gym clothes in the nurse’s office bathroom every day so nobody would see him in the locker room because it was safer, or even earlier than that, every time as a kid when he’d look in a mirror and wonder what was wrong with him because he didn’t act like the other boys and didn’t really look like them either.

Maybe this Halloween was just the catalyst of something that was bound to happen eventually.

\\_._/

Bitty has just under 30 minutes to prepare his presentation before Jack gets home from his run. He knows this because Jack has his morning routine fine-tuned down to the minute, and even the slightest variation is unusual. Barring the occasional delay due to morning sex, it stays the same every day.

Morning sex was unfortunately absent today because Bitty had convinced Jack to stay in bed for an extra hour yesterday morning, so this morning Jack was doubly determined to stick to his schedule to make up for yesterday’s negligence. Bitty doesn’t mind this too much-- he’s just grateful to have had a full two nights with Jack, since it’ll be the last full weekend they can spend together for a while, what with the start of the NHL regular season and Bitty’s own game schedule beginning soon.

Anyway, Jack may have rejected Bitty’s sleepy attempts at keeping him in bed this morning, but he hadn’t said no to pancakes, so Bitty is now keeping one careful eye on the griddle while he scrolls through his Pinterest feed for costume inspiration. The formal invitation to the Halloween party sits next to him on the granite countertop of the island, with a full description about the haunted house and full bar that will be at the event.

Bitty’s fairly certain that it won’t take much convincing to get Jack to agree to his costume idea, but he’s going to pull up some pictures as evidence for his case, in the off-chance Jack already had his own plans.

But really. Bitty wants to be Peter Pan, and he’s pretty sure that the only convincing Jack’s going to need is a picture of the leggings he’s planning on buying for the costume. And maybe the cute little hat, too.

The only flaw to this plan is Jack’s costume. He has a few half-baked ideas about Jack being Captain Hook, with a handsome long coat and his hair coiffed nicely, and of course a plastic hook to finish the look. He knows that Jack would look good, but he still feels weird about having Jack dress up as the villain of the story.

And maybe it’s especially weird because Peter Pan is a kid, right? Maybe it’s weird to have a couples costume where one of them is a child and the other is an adult. Oh, lord-- he can see the Deadspin headlines now. And the comments. And the--

Bitty takes a deep breath and distracts himself by flipping the pancakes. They land almost perfectly despite his shaking hands. The motion is second nature to him.

So, maybe no Peter Pan, as cute as the idea was. Maybe he’ll just have to find something a little less likely to be misinterpreted. Thankfully, he has Google on his side.

He waits a moment so he can remove the pancakes from the griddle and sits back down. Less than five minutes into his research session he finds a Buzzfeed quiz purporting to help find the perfect couples’ costume. It starts off with the standard fare-- pick a color, pick a movie you both like, etc.

Bitty laughs a little at “how would you describe your partner?”

 _Handsome. Caring. Food-motivated,_ he thinks, with a wry little smile as he glances back at the pancakes stacked neatly on one of the nice ceramic plates Bitty had helped pick out, all ready for when Jack returns from his run. Nothing like a little bribery breakfast to get his way with this costume, whenever it is he finally decides on one.

He goes with “passionate,” because it’s the best option out of the limited choices. That’s the last question, so he lets the page buffer for a moment and slides off the island stool to pour two glasses of orange juice as the results load.

Bitty laughs out loud when he sits back down. No, he and Jack will _not_ be dressing up as a plug and a socket for Halloween, thank you very much. He likes to think that they’re a little bit classier than that-- and anyway, this event is open to the media, and he should probably avoid getting photos of himself portraying an awful innuendo posted all over the Internet.

Back to the drawing board, then. He’s supposed to be taking a break from Twitter right now, or at least, that’s what he told himself when the first few news sites had identified him and people had started tweeted at him, but he keeps finding himself opening the app. Not to post anything, of course, but just to lurk a little.

Right now, he goes to his own profile, hits the “media” tab, and scrolls for a minute. Maybe looking at his old costumes will give him some inspiration. He has won Best Costume at the annual Haus-oween party two years in a row, after all.

And-- right. Last year’s puck bunny romper had been his first ever _sexy_ Halloween costume. Not that he’d felt particularly sexy, because there was always a weird disconnect in his head when he thought of himself that way, but it was definitely a sexy item of clothing. The bottom of the shorts had barely covered his butt, after all, and just the puck bunny stereotype in general alluded to the message of the costume.

The funny thing was that he hadn’t actually had sex with Jack in the costume-- Jack had been at an away game that weekend, and while they’d exchanged a particularly steamy series of texts that night after Bitty sent a few selfies, he’d never actually worn the costume when Jack was physically there with him.

The outfit was still stuffed into his closet at the Haus somewhere, he was pretty sure, but-- no. He couldn’t wear that. Journalists. Cameras. People on the Internet who did not want to see that much leg on any guy, let alone a tiny one who didn’t really have anything special to show off in the first place.

No puck bunny part deux, then.

He scrolls a little bit longer and finds some photos from his sophomore year, when he’d--

Oh.

Somehow, his Mrs. Lovett costume had completely slipped his mind, and he startles a little bit when he sees the photo. Two feelings hit him hard: first, pride over how good he’d looked, and then a few seconds later, shame. Despite being alone in the kitchen, he can feel his cheeks redden.

This summer, Bitty had ended up spending two weeks in Georgia with his family. He’d spent most of the time locked away in his childhood bedroom, and he could only think of three times Coach and him had a proper, face-to-face conversation.

The longest one was when Bitty was rambling about something or other to his mama and made some off-hand comment about a goal Jack had made during playoffs. Coach didn’t remember which goal it was, and Bitty already had his laptop in front of him, so he opened up Youtube real quick and found a video.

As Coach leaned over his shoulder to watch-- the closest physical contact they’d had all summer, too-- Bitty’s eyes flitted up to the top of the screen to see if his open tabs revealed anything particularly incriminating that he didn’t want Coach to see. An old habit, he supposed. His tabs were okay, but a moment later, Coach let out a gruff hum and pointed to the corner of the screen, to the next recommended video.

_Drag Queen Transformation Compilation._

“Chrissake,” Coach had said. “What the hell is the world coming to?”

And Bitty? Bitty hadn’t said a word, and neither had his mama.

Now Bitty can hear Coach’s words ringing in his ears as he fumbles in an effort to delete the picture of himself as Mrs. Lovett as quickly as possible. Sweet Jesus-- what was he thinking? His account might be private, but any of the people he’s approved to follow could easily screenshot that and post it somewhere else. That wasn’t fair to Jack. After all, the very first comment Bitty had seen about himself after the cup win, the top comment on a goddamn Yahoo Sports article about Jack coming out center ice, said: _I don’t have an issue with it, but that’s a career ender for sure. Hockey fans are conservative guys. That’s just fact._

So yeah, maybe Bitty’s not embarrassed about being gay, and maybe he’s learning to be proud of himself, but he’s practical.

He deletes the puck bunny picture too, for good measure. And then a few more tweets he’d missed the first time around. And considers changing his profile picture again, to something maybe without a dumb bow tie.

“Oh! I didn’t know if you’d be awake yet.”

Bitty jumps. Even though he’s facing the front doorway of the apartment, he’s somehow completely missed Jack opening the door and entering while he sat, entranced by his own Twitter feed. His hands move with a mind of their own and slam his laptop screen down even as he blinks at Jack and realizes he’s home from his run. Another old habit.

Jack blinks back, unused to Bitty not immediately launching into a rundown of his morning social media discoveries. “Everything okay?” he asks as he toes out of his sneakers, and then his socks.

Bitty wrinkles his nose at that. “No bare feet in the kitchen when your feet are sweaty, honey.”

Jack looks up and makes an expression that’s only minutely different from a blank face, but Bitty recognizes it as a pout. “My feet are hot.”

“Ugh,” Bitty says. “Okay, but I’m making you mop later.”

“That’s fair,” Jack says, dropping his socks on top of his god awful yellow sneakers and coming into the kitchen. His eyes light up when he sees the stack of pancakes. “Did you just make those?”

“Yes,” Bitty says, leaning back in his seat and tilting his head to Jack can easily reach to kiss his cheek. “If you hurry up and get a plate you can eat before they get cold. Oh-- darn, I meant to make eggs, too.”

“It’s okay,” Jack says, getting two plates and handing one to Bitty. “I can make eggs if I want them after. What were you doing?”

Bitty hums for a second, stalling an immediate answer, then takes a sip of orange juice. When he swallows, he leans forward with his elbows on the island surface and flashes Jack a smile.

“Looking at Halloween costumes,” he says.

“Oh,” Jack says. “Do we need costumes?”

“Yes! Gosh, sweetie. Did you even read the invitation?”

Jack shrugs while he carefully pours himself a small amount of maple syrup, which means that he assumed Bitty would read it. “What are we going as?”

“Mm.” Bitty takes another sip of orange juice. “Maybe I’ll keep it a surprise. Do you trust me to pick out something good, hon?”

Jack offers Bitty the pancake dish, and he takes one. “You usually do good costumes. I trust you,” he says.

Good costumes. Yeah, right. Bitty forces a smile. “Perfect. I’ll do something good, I promise. What are you doing for the rest of today, sugar?”

Jack is mid-bite, and a slow talker in general, so Bitty has time to carefully cut his pancake into pieces before Jack swallows and says, “Oh, after you leave?”

Bitty nods.

“Uh. George says I gotta meet with our digital media director so she can teach me how to use Instagram.”

“Oh, thank God,” Bitty says, laughing a little as he eats a tiny forkful of pancake. “So will you finally start posting things other than landscape shots?

Jack gives him a small smile. “I thought you liked my landscape photos.”

“I do! Oh, I do, sweetie, you take beautiful photos. But you also have a very handsome face you could post, too.”

Jack shrugs. “Maybe. We’ll see what she says. If it’s too complicated, I’ll just let you run it, maybe.”

Bitty shakes his head as he laughs again. “Silly boy. You don’t want to give me that power. I would have way too much fun with that.”

“Hm. Maybe. I’ll keep you updated, eh?”

“Of course you will,” Bitty says, leaning forward in his barstool to reach up and wipe a spot of syrup from Jack’s chin. “You know I’ll be texting you the whole ride home.”

“Ah, right. Speaking of which. Let me order you a Lyft today?” Jack bumps his nose against Bitty’s hand, just to be a little silly, as he gets up to put both their plates in the sink.

Bitty would love to take a Lyft, but there’s something that unsettles him about letting his rich boyfriend order him an expensive personal car for a long ride home. “The train’s really no problem, honey,” he says, half-heartedly.

“If we maybe mess around and do some other stuff for an hour or so, I won’t have time to bring you to the train station before my appointment anyway, so you’d have to get a Lyft,” Jack says, cautiously. He’s getting used to Bitty’s weird mental rules about things. Smart boy, finding loopholes. Bitty can’t exactly disagree with him.

“Oh, you’re a menace. Okay. Messing around it is. Lead me there,” he says, standing up as well and holding out his arms. It’s a signal for Jack to drag him to the bedroom.

Jack glances back at the sink. “Should we at least do the dishes first?”

Bitty raises his brow. “You want to do dishes?”

Jack doesn’t even acknowledge that with an answer. He just throws Bitty over his shoulder and carries him to the bedroom, both of them laughing the whole way.

\\_._/

Three days later, Bitty is neck deep in readings he’s been procrastinating when he decides to take a five hour break to find the perfect costume. The foolproof costume. He cross checks about thirty NHL player Instagrams to figure out the best option, and when he finally decides he opens up Amazon. He’s already logged into Jack’s account on his laptop, and he only feels a little bit bad as he uses his card info to order everything to be delivered to Providence.

Jack’s on a four night roadie in California, and probably just settling down for bed if Bitty’s math is right, so he answers almost instantly.

Bitty smiles to himself and closes all of his unnecessary tabs. He has an early midterm tomorrow and he kind of hasn’t started studying yet, so it’s really time to stop procrastinating on that. If he spends two hours studying now he’ll still have time to take a shower and get four hours of sleep, and that’s good enough for now. He’ll try to take a nap tomorrow. For now he’s just happy he finally found costumes that no one can find an issue with.

\\_._/

For whatever reason, Bitty’s mind decides to hyperfocus on Halloween. Maybe it’s just the stress of midterms and the increasing amount of questions he’s been getting about Jack from friends and strangers alike, but he can’t help but think constantly about how many journalists are going to be at the event. It’s a big thing, after all, a fundraiser for the local children’s hospital, and the media will eat that right up.

It’s also Bitty and Jack’s first major public appearance as a couple. Bitty had missed family skate at the beginning of the season because he’d had to attend a little media day of his own for Samwell. So yes, while they’ve both answered plenty of questions since they first kissed at center ice, they haven’t actually done so together yet. That’s why this has to be _perfect._

That's why Bitty has to be perfect.

So Bitty schedules a haircut for a week before Halloween, because god forbid he look shaggy or sloppy. He finds himself rubbing his hand over the mirror to de-fog it as he gets out of the shower a few hours after his haircut.

He’s not thrilled with what he sees. He’s not ugly, per se, but there’s something about the too-harsh bathroom lighting that makes him cringe as he leans over the sink to look closer.

Ugh. Of course midterms just had to be right before Halloween, because the combined stress of his exams and papers on top of his fears about not having the boys ready for their first game means that he’s broken out something awful. He’s got a smattering of pimples on his cheeks and forehead, and one nasty blackhead right on the tip of his nose. Dear lord. He looks like a greasy thirteen-year-old. He’s been washing his face every day, but he’s not sure if he can clear this all up before the party, especially when he still has exams this week to worry about.

It probably also doesn’t help that he’s been eating like a teenager, too, he thinks, poking his stomach. That is to say, most of his meals have been made up of coffee and pastries. He’s nowhere near as toned as he was at the end of last season. He had abs, for Pete’s sake. He still does, of course-- they’re just a little hidden now. Darn midterms and darn stress eating. And the fact that they’ve had three Haus parties in as many weeks, and maybe he’s had a few self-indulgent wine nights in-between.

It wouldn’t even be that bad, really, if it weren’t for HD cameras and pushy journalists and the fact that Bitty knows he won’t be able to control his angles for publicity shots, and especially for the the fact that his boyfriend is the son of a literal actual model and has the body of a god. Bitty might not always look like a pudgy little kid with too-big eyes and awful skin, but he sure as hell does when he’s standing next to Jack.

He vows right then and there to do better. No beer, for one. Definitely going light on junk food, but that’s not too hard, when he barely has time for eating between practices and classes and mediating team drama in the first place. He recognizes that it’s not great habit to get into, but it’s only a week, so. Sacrifices can be made.

(Bitty remembers skipping lunch every day before he switched schools his freshman year-- how he’d first done it out of necessity, when he hadn’t had anyone to sit with in the cafeteria during the lunch period. Every time he so much as stepped foot into a cafeteria he couldn’t stop thinking about all the times he’d been tripped or shoved and ended up with the hot meal of the day splattered on his clothes. It was safer to just avoid lunch all together and sit in the library to do homework on the computers where Mrs. Rivas, the librarian, could keep an eye on him. And sure, maybe it wasn’t great that he didn’t eat lunch at all during that time, since food wasn’t allowed in the library, but he was still figure skating then, and he needed to stay in perfect shape so he could fit into his outfits for performances)

Sometimes, Bitty does stuff like this. It’s like, he knows it’s wrong, but it doesn’t even feel real if no one notices, and if no one notices, why should he care? No harm, no foul.

\\_._/

\\_._/

“We’re dressing up as… cowboys?”

The boxes from Amazon have been taking up space on the coffee table for a week now. When he got to the apartment, Bitty was pleased to see that Jack kept his promise and they were still sealed. The Falconers event is tonight, so Bitty finally gave Jack permission to open them just now, and Jack had taken the opportunity with more enthusiasm than Bitty was expecting.

Now, as he sits on the couch with a cowboy hat in his lap, he just looks baffled. Bitty reaches out to pluck the hat from where it rests on top of Jack’s leg and place it on Jack’s head.He looks a little bit silly, with the Falcs sweatpants and hoodie he’d had on to go to the gym earlier and his hair curling slightly around his ears. He needs a haircut, Bitty thinks, but he knows he can’t get worked up over that now. The party is in an hour so there’s no time to worry about little details that can’t be helped.

Bitty nods. “Open the other box,” he says. “I got more things, too.”

No lasso, because Bitty had the forethought to think of potential rope innuendos. He’s pretty proud of that, but as Jack opens the box and takes out two pairs of boots and jeans, he frowns.

“Are we, um. Specific cowboys?”

Bitty’s not sure what he isn’t getting. “No? We’re just cowboys. Didn’t you ever play pretend cowboys when you were a kid?”

“Ah, no. I usually just played pretend hockey,” Jack says.

“Of course you did. Well, I considered pirates, but all the costumes on Amazon looked pretty cheap, and I was running out of time to have things delivered on time, and also I thought you’d look pretty handsome in a cowboy hat, so I just went with this. Is that okay?”

“No-- it’s okay. It’s just simple.”

“Back to the basics,” Bitty says, but now he has his doubts. Jack clearly doesn’t like it. “You don’t have to wear a shirt under the vest if you don’t want?”

“Uh,” Jack lifts up the vest that’s been sitting in his lap. “Will you be wearing a shirt?”

“Do you want me to wear a shirt?” Bitty asks, careful. He’s been working out extra for weeks now in case they do go shirtless, but he doesn’t want to assume. He feels a little bit weird about it, but it is an adult only Halloween party, and Tater had reassured him via text during a late-night panic that most everyone will be doing some sort of “sexy ))))) costume.”

Jack shakes his head. The hat stays on fairly securely. Bitty’s glad he got the sizing right. “No shirts.”

“Okay, shirtless cowboys, then,” Bitty says.

“Sexy cowboys.”

Bitty snorts. “Yes, Jack. We can be sexy cowboys. Do you want to get ready now?”

Jack drops the other cowboy hat on Bitty’s head and grins at him. “Yes. And you were right.”

“Hm?” Bitty says, standing up and gathering his parts of the costume.

“The hats are pretty handsome.”

\\_._/

(They don’t actually get into their costumes and head over right away, because there’s a fair amount of fooling around as they get changed. This ends with Bitty in bed in a suede vest and cowboy hat and nothing else, and Jack even more naked as he pants beside him.)

(“Are you okay?” Jack asks, suddenly serious-- Bitty can see that in his eyes.)

(“What?” Bitty asks, caught off-guard. Why would Jack question that? Can he tell Bitty hasn’t slept more than a few hours a night in weeks? Bitty had done his best to cover up the bags under his eyes with the tiniest bit of concealer, and he thought it looked okay, but maybe he needs to touch it up. “I’m fine, sweetie. You catch your breath so we can get ready before we end up a little bit more than fashionably late.”)

\\_._/

The party is hosted at an older hotel in downtown Providence that’s been converted into a haunted house of sorts. Bitty’s pretty sure it operates as an escape room or some other trendy attraction for the rest of the year, but he honestly can’t be bothered to remember right now as they’re ushered into the old ballroom where drinks are being served.

But first, there’s a photo op. As the first few camera bulbs go off, Bitty tenses up and clings to Jack’s chest, trying not to cringe as he thinks about how awful he’s going to look with the flash on. For just a few seconds, the noise and the worries are just _too much._ His ears are ringing and he can’t see past the unnatural white light. He balls up his hands as fists in the fabric of Jack’s vest and does his best to keep his teeth bared in a smile.

The flashes stop for a second and Bitty has a moment to compose himself. He pulls away from Jack a little. Christ, what was he thinking? He probably looks silly clinging to him. For the next pose he settles for tucking himself next to Jack’s side and rising up on his tiptoes to compensate for the height difference. Despite being closer, Bitty still feels a world away from Jack, and it takes him a few moments too long to pick out his soft voice over the din of shutter clicks and loud conversation.

“You with me, bud?” Jack asks, moving his hand to rest at the small of Bitty’s back.

“Of course!” Bitty says, the response automatic. He hasn’t stopped smiling yet and his cheeks hurt. “It’s just a little loud in here, is all. What did you say?”

A lock of Jack’s hair is out of place, and Bitty is so distracted in reaching up to fix it that he almost misses Jack asking if he wants to go get a drink, but he somehow manages to nod and thankfully doesn’t have to put any effort into finding the bar, because Jack gently tugs him all the way there.

And then there’s a glass of something fruity and brightly-colored in his hand and a glass of what looks like hard cider in Jack’s. When did that happen? He takes a sip and-- oh, this is very strong. It’s exactly what he needs right now. Belatedly, he clinks his glass against Jack’s and takes a longer gulp, then raises on his toes again to peek over Jack’s shoulder and figure out who they should socialize politely with first. A recent call-up from the farm team is dressed as Batman, and the girl hanging off his arm is dressed in a very short skirt and tank top with a logo that Bitty thinks indicates that she’s Superman-- or Supergirl? He shakes his head. He’s not sure how straight people couple costumes work.

He takes another sip, then nearly drops the entire glass when a very large pair of arms wrap around him from behind. His first impulse is to drop to the ground, and though his body does everything in its ability to do so, whoever it is is strong enough to keep him held upright, so he just slumps back slightly and lets out an embarrassingly loud yelp.

“Oh, sorry, B!” The voice behind him is warm and accented. “Did not mean to scare you.”

It’s Tater. It’s just Tater. Bitty’s eyes still smart like he’s staring at camera flashes. He’s safe, though-- why can’t his stupid pulse just slow down? He can feel his heart where it’s jumped up into his throat, but he locks his knees to force himself to stay upright and turns around. If he leans back against Jack’s chest a little for support, well-- that’s just between him and Jack.

“It’s okay, hon!” Bitty says, looking Tater up and down. He’s wearing a white t-shirt and very, very short athletic shorts, and a sweatband around his forehead. In his hand he grasps a tennis racket. For whatever reason, he’s also wearing wire-frame glasses without lenses. “You look adorable,” he says.

“Thank you! You and Zimmboni are…” Tater trails off, squinting at them. He looks at Bitty, then up at Jack, who has wrapped his arms around Bitty from behind. “Oh, I understand! Brokeback! Funny!”

“Sorry?” Jack says. Bitty doesn’t need to glance back at him to know that he’s doing that little head tilt he does when he doesn’t understand a reference.

“Brokeback Mountain!” Tater says, and Bitty can feel his entire body deflate.

Jack braces himself as Bitty’s knees buckle. Shit. Bitty pushes off against Jack and puts himself solidly between the two taller men. He’s shaky on his feet and he can already feel a warm buzz in his veins, but he crosses his arms and stands his ground.

“Tater, we are _not_ dressed as gay cowboys, thank you very much. We’re just regular cowboys.”  

Dear lord. If _Tater_ of all people think that _that’s_ what their costume is referencing, then who else might have made the connection?

This is a nightmare. Bitty is not nearly tipsy enough to deal with this. He drains what’s left in his glass in one long swig, then slips away from the others and waltzes up to the counter to order another.

“But you can make it a little stronger, hon,” he tells the bartender. “This ain’t my first rodeo,” he says, and smiles when she laughs. There. Now he’s starting to get into the spirit of these costumes. He thinks he actually has a chance of having fun tonight, if he can just manage to shake the feeling of electricity running just under his skin, making his entire body just the tiniest bit itchy.

Oh, well. There’s a dance floor, and for now the media seems distracted, so he thinks he can join a few of the wives he likes to chat with and let loose for a bit.

\\_._/

An hour and two-- no, three-- fruity drinks later, Bitty is out of breath and covered in a sticky sheen of sweat as he finds a folding chair to collapse into. Between dancing and doing shots with Snowy and his wife, and a surprisingly vigorous round of Halloween movie trivia, he’s managed to lose his cowboy hat. He’s thankful he thought to style his hair and apply a healthy amount of hairspray back at Jack’s apartment, but he’s pretty sure he still looks like a hot mess.

Speaking of Jack-- oh, there he is. He’s mostly been standing off at the sidelines of everything, glad to sip at the same cider he’s been nursing since they got there and giving Bitty a thumbs up every so often when they make eye contact.

Now, as Bitty slumps deeper into this very uncomfortable chair, Jack makes his way across the room with a plastic cup in hand and crouches so he’s at Bitty’s level and hands it to him.

Bitty looks down. It’s water, which isn’t really his mood right now, but when he looks back up, Jack is staring at him with those big blue eyes, so Bitty relents and takes a small sip.

“Having fun?” Jack asks.

“Of course!” Bitty smiles. He’s gotten rid of some of the jitters he’d had before, at least. Now he just feels like his head and body are floating away from each other. The room is spinning a little bit.

“Do you want one of the snacks?” Jack asks, taking a seat beside Bitty. If Bitty’s uncomfortable in the tiny plastic folding chairs, then Jack must be doubly so. He absolutely dwarfs the rickety little thing.

“No, I’m good, sweetpea. Thanks for askin’, though,” Bitty says.

“Are you sure? I never asked if you had dinner before you came, and--”

Bitty cuts him off by leaning forward and pressing their lips together quickly. It’s not romantic in any way, but it gets the job done. When he pulls away, Jack is quiet.

“I had an early dinner back at Samwell,” Bitty says. It’s a lie.

“Oh. Okay.” Jack says. He fixes Bitty with a look again, and the weight of his gaze covers Bitty like a heavily blanket. His worry is _stifling._ “Do you want to head home?”

Head home? It’s not even close to midnight yet. Bitty’s not going to duck out of the party early for every silly journalist in Rhode Island to speculate about his after-party activities. “No, I’m having fun! I just need a minute to hydrate and catch my breath, is all” he says. He needs to prove to Jack that he can stay. There’s gotta be something he can distract him with.

He sits with his eyes closed, slouched in his chair, and feels something light and soft fall on top of his head, but waits a few seconds before he opens his eyes to see what it is. He really is a little lightheaded, now that’s he’s had a chance to sit down and think about it.

He opens his eyes and sees the brim of Jack’s cowboy hat hanging over his forehead. “Oh, thank you, honey,” he says, then makes a decision. “Let’s do the haunted house.”

Jack looks surprised, which Bitty supposes is fair. He’s usually the one trying to convince Bitty to watch scary movies while Bitty resists as much as he can. He’s not a huge fan of jump scares, so the few times that Jack has managed to convince him, he’s ended up under a pile of blankets and hiding his face in Jack’s shirt before even ten minutes have passed.

Now, though, it seems like an okay idea. He’s feeling loose and more relaxed than he’s felt in months, and it might be fun to cuddle up against Jack. They won’t have to worry about reporters around inside the haunted part, at least.

“Okay,” Jack says after a few beats of silence too long, a little hesitant. He offers a hand to help Bitty up and Bitty gladly takes him up on the offer, leaning on him for support as they exit the ballroom and follow the signs that lead them to the haunted hotel attraction.

Bitty realizes his mistake almost immediately, when two workers dressed in old-timey hotel uniforms usher them into an elevator covered in what he hopes are fake cobwebs. Already, he can feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and he goes entirely still once the elevator starts to move and the lights flicker out.

He feels Jack’s arms encircle his waist, but for once it isn’t helping. _Stop touching me,_ he wants to say-- to shout. He wants to crawl out of his skin and the feeling of Jack’s skin on his is too much, but somehow he gets the feeling that being alone in the haunted house would be even worse, so he stays silent as they listen to a voiceover telling the story of the abandoned hotel over the loudspeakers. The recording plays a loud creaking noise as the elevator comes to a stop and dim lights flicker back on. The door opens and Jack gently nudges them out into a room.

Bitty’s eyes are already on the door on the far side of the room. They just need to keep following the doors to get out, the workers had said. In his peripheral vision he can see overturned furniture and more fake cobwebs, but he focuses on the exit.

“I wonder if this was an old service elevator,” Jack murmurs quietly as they step into the room. “There’s no way a guest elevator would have opened up directly into a room. Unless--” he breaks off as a harsh gust of air blows into them from a vent in the ceiling. Bitty tenses even more than before, but stays silent.

From elsewhere in the house, he can hear a high-pitched scream. He can’t tell if it’s a performer, someone from the Falcs’ staff, or someone’s partner, but he feels bad for whoever it is. This whole setup is _awful_.

“Come on, bud. We gotta move if we ever want to get out of here,” Jack says, hands on Bitty’s arms to gently guide him forward again. Bitty might put up a fit about being made to go first, but they’re currently pressed so closely together that he thinks it doesn’t make a huge difference anyway.

Their first performer jumps out from an old wardrobe as they enter the next room, and it’s now that Bitty lets out a shriek. Even Jack tenses up a bit as the man, dressed in an ill-fitting suit and bloody makeup, swings an axe in their direction. Bitty ducks his head and stares at the ground as they hurry past him and into the next room. And the next-- there are several more of the same sort of thing, similar enough that Bitty manages to brace himself and sort of unfocus his eyes so he doesn’t pay attention to it. It’s not too hard to lose his focus on his surroundings when his head is spinning so much, anyway.

Things change when they exit what appeared to be a hotel kitchen and find themselves in a long, empty hallway. There’s a doorway at the end and Bitty figures that must be their goal. He starts to move forward, pulling away from Jack for a moment while he stops to examine the walls.

“I bet the picture frames are going to--” Jack starts, then goes silent as all the lights go off and they’re drenched in pitch black darkness. “Oh, shit,” he says. “Where’d you go, bud?”

“Over here,” Bitty says. He’s pretty sure that Jack is only a few steps away. He sounds close, at least. He looks up in the direction of the end of the hallway and sees that the door is a dimly lit rectangle. If he ran, he could make it there in ten seconds, probably. “I think we just gotta head to the door up there.”

Then there’s a knock just ahead of Bitty, and another. No, not a knock-- footsteps, something like dress shoes on hardwood. Bitty tenses up and takes a step backward. There’s definitely someone else in the hallway there with them.

The lights go on, then off again, rapidly. Strobe lights. It takes Bitty a second to blink at the sudden harshness of it before he sees a shape approaching from a few feet away, taller and larger than him and getting bigger as he shrinks backward.

It’s not even the costumed zombie that does it in the end, though, but rather Jack finally finding him in the dark and reaching out to put his arm around Bitty’s shoulder and pull him in, protectively, that does it. It happens too fast-- the feeling of another hand making contact with his body, even if it is just Jack.

That’s when he passes out.

\\_._/

More than anything else, Bitty is aware of the overwhelming nausea and vertigo. His eyes are closed, but he knows if he so much as opens them or moves even the tiniest bit, he’s going to get very sick. In fact, he might get sick anyway, because he feels like he’s moving already, bobbing up and down.

Oh. He’s being carried. He deduces this because the feeling stops a few seconds later when he is suddenly no longer surrounded by warm arms, but rather stationary and propped up with his back against a cold, hard wall.

“Come on, bud,” he hears. “Tater’s going to get you some water. Squeeze my hand if you understand.”

That would explain the warm pressure against his fingers, then. Bitty squeezes weakly.

“There you go. Can you look at me?”

Bitty shakes his head no. “Don’t wanna,” he says, internally cringing at how much he sounds like a petulant child.

“Please?” Jack tries, again.

This time, Bitty opens his eyes. He blinks at the harsh fluorescent lights of the bathroom that Jack’s carried him into. It’s mostly quiet in here, but he can hear the sounds of a crowd just outside the door. They must be back near the main ballroom, again.

“Too bright,” he says, glaring at Jack.

Jack meets his attitude with a twitch of his lip that definitely means he’s fighting a smile. “Glad you’re feeling better,” he chirps. “I was worried we’d need to take a trip to the hospital tonight. I think we can probably hold off until tomorrow, though.”

“The hospital?” Bitty says. He passed out, sure-- he can’t deny that-- but he passes out _all the time._ It’s really not that big of a deal. This is just something that happens to him. “I’m okay, hon. Just need to sleep. Honest.”

Jack looks doubtful, but they’re interrupted then by Tater pushing his way into the bathroom. He has two cups of water in hand-- tennis racket suspiciously absent-- and he hurries to kneel on the ground in front of Bitty.

“Itty Bitty! You drink this,” he says, then stands up again and hands the other cup to Jack. “This one for Zimmboni to drink and take deep breath.”

Jack nods and takes one long, exaggerated breath. It’s only now as Bitty looks up at him that he notices how much he’s shaking.

That’s all Bitty’s fault.

Tater and Jack talk about some shenanigan or another happening out on the dance floor while Bitty sips at his water, then fishes his phone out of his back pocket. The screen’s okay, so he must not have fallen on it when he passed out, thankfully. It’s possible that Jack caught him. He can’t remember much.

He has about a hundred unread notifications in the group chat, and while he scans through them quickly it seems like it’s mostly updates about Shitty, Lardo, Ransom, and Holster’s adventures trying to trick-or-treat as adults. The most recent texts, however, have shifted topics.

In fact, Shitty’s most recent message says: _THIS IS NOT A DRILL JACKYBOY’S INSTA HAS FINALLY BEEN CHRISTENED GOD BLESS,_ followed by a series of exclamation points and a text from Holster that says, _sexaaay bittayyy!_

The nausea that had been slowly declining comes back full force as Bitty quickly closes out of the messenger app and accidentally hits Snapchat before successfully opening Instagram.

It shows up right at the top of his feed like it wants to mock him: a photo of Bitty looking like a disaster, posted about thirty minutes before.

It must have been while he and Jack were sitting at the chairs off to the side of the ballroom, right before they’d gotten up to go to the haunted house. The picture shows Bitty slouched in his seat, eyes closed, plastic water cup in hand, with Jack’s cowboy hat perched low over his forehead. His skin looks greasy and his cheeks are red with how drunk he is. The vest doesn’t cover up nearly enough of his torso and the angle makes it look like he doesn’t have a chin. There are at least ten things he’d use his photo editing apps to correct about this picture before even _texting_ it to someone.

 _My boyfriend already managed to lose his cowboy hat, so I gave him mine,_ the caption says.

Bitty looks disgusting.

It’s enough to trigger what felt inevitable anyway. Bitty pushes Jack and Tater aside and springs to his feet, barely staying upright as he hurries into a stall and throws up into a toilet. Jack follows him an instant later, crouching down behind him and rubbing his back. There’s not much for Bitty to throw up, so it doesn’t last long, and soon Jack is offering a ball of wadded-up toilet paper for Bitty to use to wipe his mouth.

“Do you think you’re going to get sick again?” Jack asks. He reaches out to brush Bitty’s hair off of his forehead. Bitty can feel that his skin is slick with sweat.

“I don’t think so,” Bitty says, voice small, and Jack reaches under him to lift him, bridal style, back into the main area of the bathroom. Tater has ducked out, presumably to give them some privacy and not crowd them. Bitty’s thankful for that.

Jack sets Bitty back down and hands him his water cup again. “Finish this and then we’re heading home,” he says.

Bitty stares at the cup blankly for a second, then looks back up at Jack. “Why did you post that?” he asks, voice breaking. Oh, no. He’s not going to cry right now. He tries to will the tears welling in his eyes to stay put.

“Sorry?” Jack asks. “Why did I post-- on Instagram?”

“I look like a hot mess!” Bitty says. “Why didn’t you show it to me first?”

“You look fine, bud. More than fine. It’s a cute picture,” Jack says. He’s finished his own cup of water and now he squeezes it in one shaking hand until it’s crumpled.

“I could have edited it,” Bitty said. “You can’t just _post_ unedited _photos_ like that.” Why doesn’t Jack understand?

“Edited? Like Photoshop?” Jack asks, cocking his head. “You don’t need to edit your photos, Bittle. Do you do that?”

Bitty can’t even answer that. He just takes the last sip of his water and drops the cup onto the ground. He feels like someone ran him over with a truck. “You know what? I don’t even want to talk about this,” he says. “We can discuss it tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Jack says, reaching his arms around Bitty again.

This time, Bitty finally pushes away. He swats at Jack’s arm and backs up two inches until his spine hits the tiled wall of the bathroom. “Stop it,” he hisses.

“Bittle,” Jack says, voice low. Again, he needs to stop with those eyes. Bitty can’t stand it when he does that. It makes him feel so guilty. “What’s wrong? You’ve been acting weird all night. You’re clearly not feeling well. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Why didn’t he tell Jack? Because it’s impossible to talk to him about _anything_ serious when it feels like a hundred different people are vying for his attention every day.

“I didn’t want to go home early,” he says.

“There’s nothing wrong with needing to go home,” Jack says, and it sounds like something he’s directly repeating from his therapist, because it comes out robotic. “Or even not wanting to come at all. We could have just stayed home.”

“Fuck!” Bitty says, surprising even himself as he sits up and pushes past Jack to stand, shakily. “That’s not how any of this works. We can’t just not come to these things. And I don’t need to stay home. I’m not _you,_ Jack! I actually know how to have fun.”

He regrets it as soon as he says it, but still-- doesn’t Jack realize he’s doing this for _him?_ They’re always going to judge Jack on the people who he surrounds himself with, and maybe Bitty isn’t perfect, but he can try to make himself better as much as he can. Then maybe they’ll be at least a little bit fair to Jack. Jack’s too good for all of them.

Bitty can’t even see where he’s walking because of the stars in his eyes from lightheadedness. He ends up leaning against a wall, then blindly fumbles for the door of the bathroom. He glances back and sees Jack still motionless, standing in the middle of the bathroom. Bitty can tell he’s still processing what Bitty said.

“Let’s talk about this tomorrow,” Jack says, finally, but Bitty is already halfway out the door. He can see Tater standing just outside. He just needs to make it to Tater.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Bitty says. “You do what you want. I’m having Tater drive me home.” He doesn’t specify which home he means-- maybe Tater will drive him back to Samwell, or maybe just bring Bitty to his house. Bitty really doesn’t care. He just wants to be alone and in a bed, so he lets the bathroom door slam and tumbles into Tater’s arms.

“Hi, Itty Bitty,” Tater says. “Feel better now?”

“Much better,” Bitty says, although he’s pretty sure he’s never felt this sick in his life. “Bring me home, please.”


	2. so now i'm giving up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bitty's breakdown reaches a climax.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings for this chapter: continued food issues, general hopelessness and depression, use of a homophobic slur, and a mildly graphic PTSD-related nightmare.
> 
> Also-- sorry for how long this took. My laptop broke and I still haven't found a replacement I can afford, so I'm currently using a borrowed one that has some limitations.

_ Pain is never permanent but tonight it’s killing me _

(From December, Neck Deep)

At his core, Bitty is a liar.

He always has been, too. Never enough for anyone to actually think he has a problem, but certainly he’s always had a flair for the dramatic. He can remember sitting at his table at Kindergarten, clutching his apple juice with sticky hands during snack time, and leaning forward in his tiny plastic chair to tell his classmates the latest gossip he’d overheard from his mama, adding his own exaggerations and flairs as he pleased.

That was innocent enough, but by the time he was in middle school it had evolved. By then he knew that there awful parts of him that he had to keep secret if he wanted people to still like him. So he lied-- about which girls he wanted to kiss, and about how he was feeling, and about how  _ angry  _ he was at everyone he saw at school every day. 

Being nice is almost always a lie. 

Sometimes it’s hard to tell now what’s a lie and what’s real. Bitty likes vlogging because he can use a script and go through as many takes as he needs to get things looking perfect. If he looks too glum in one shot he can try again until even he can barely tell how awful he’s feeling by how he looks.

It happens even with Jack, sometimes, but it doesn’t feel good at all then. For the past few months it usually happens when he’s visiting Providence for the weekend and ends up staying up past Jack’s bedtime so he can finish homework and goof around on Youtube for a bit. Of course, once Jack is asleep there’s absolutely nothing to stop Bitty from procrastinating for as long as he wants, so it usually takes him a few hours to get through whatever small assignment he’s trying to finish.

It’s almost always when he finally shuts his laptop and trods into the bedroom, blinking his dry eyes as they try to adjust to the difference between a bright screen and the dim room lit only by the face of Jack’s alarm clock, that he finds himself wondering why he’s there.

Usually he pulls the sheets aside and just watches Jack for a moment as his eyes adjust. Unless he’s been having a bad anxiety day, Jack’s a fairly deep sleeper. It takes more than a little bit of sheets rustling to wake him, so Bitty can sit on the far edge of the bed and let his eyes adjust as he watches Jack. 

Even after he can see better, Jack’s such a quiet, stationary sleeper that Bitty can rarely make out the slow rise and fall of his chest unless he’s close enough to feel it. Jack is, for all intents and purposes, dead to the world. It would take a fair amount of noise and movement on Bitty’s part to wake him up, and he’s not going to do that.

Instead he settles down a few inches away and presses his face to the pillow, shutting his eyes hard while he tries to copy the breathing exercises he watches Jack do sometimes. He’s okay. He’s okay. He doesn’t need to wake up Jack just because he’s feeling lonely at three in the morning. Jack would be grumpy, or worse, he’d be too soft, too caring, and too worried about what’s  _ wrong  _ with Bitty.

What’s wrong is that there’s no reason for Bitty to be here. It’s a fucking fluke that he’s managed to con Jack into staying with him this long, anyway. Coming out had only cemented that-- it would look bad for Jack to break up with him now. Jack’s too nice to do that for a few months yet, anyway. It’ll happen later on, when the press has died down a bit.

So Bitty, maintaining a careful stretch of sheets and blankets between them so he doesn’t get too tempted to wake Jack up, keeps his eyes shut and thinks about how it’s going to go down when Jack realizes how  _ fake  _ he really is. It’s going to happen sooner or later, and Jack’s not going to be happy.

It’s a mean mind game, but it’s fair to speculate, he supposes. He’s living in a bubble and it has to burst. Might as well be realistic. He’s just gotta maintain the illusion right now for as long as he can.

\\_._/

Tater doesn’t drive Bitty back to Samwell. In fact, he doesn’t drive Bitty anywhere-- he just brings him back to his apartment in a Lyft, since they’ve both been drinking. They give it a shot, sure-- but when Tater can’t figure out his own keys and accidentally sets off the alarm instead of starting the car, they mutually agree that it’s best to just order a ride home. 

It’s a quiet ride. Tater, usually very open with physical affection, doesn’t try to touch Bitty at all after they slide into the backseat of the car. Bitty, in turn, slumps against the car door and presses his forehead against the cool glass of the window. 

“Still awake, Itty Bitty?” Tater asks after some amount of time, and Bitty raises his head, which is still spinning, to see that they’ve pulled up in front of the condo where Tater lives. He’s not sure how long they’ve been in the car. It wasn’t long enough for him to doze off, but it was close. 

“Mmhmm,” Bitty hums, then stifles a yawn. When he moves his hand away from his mouth and blinks his eyes open again, the car door next to him is already open and Tater is holding out a hand to help him up.

“Sleepy,” Tater says as he helps Bitty up and gently ushers him into the building, exchanging a few pleasantries with the doorman that go right over Bitty’s head-- both figuratively and literally. “Can you stay awake five minute while I set up guest bed?” he asks, once they’re in the elevator.

“I can sleep on the couch,” Bitty says. He’s pretty sure he could sleep anywhere right now. Standing up, even. It’s a welcome relief from his inability to sleep for the past few weeks.

“Not when you are sick,” Tater says, stepping into his apartment. He stoops down without warning and Bitty throws his arms around his shoulders instinctively to steady himself now that he’s moved. He tenses, but Tater is just gently removing his cowboy boots and setting them by the door. 

“Thank you,” Bitty slurs, patting Tater’s shoulder. “Think ‘m too messy t’ do that myself right now, oops.”

Tater stands back up and sets a hand on Bitty’s back to steer him to the guest room. “I know. Stay put. I get sheets.”

Bitty does stay put, swaying a little on his feet while he pulls out his phone to silence it. He has four missed calls from Jack and a hundred or so unread messages in the group chat, but if he looks at any of those now, he’s going to end up getting distracted for hours.

Tater returns with an armful of sheets, and as soon as he fits one to the mattress, Bitty flops down onto it, dropping his phone and closing his eyes as Tater laughs. 

“No more blankets?” Tater asks.

“Yes, more blankets,” Bitty says, and hums when what feels like three heavy blankets are tucked on top of him. “Thank you, Tater. You’re a sweetheart.”

“Anything for B,” Tater says, and Bitty can hear the smile in his voice. “Sleep now. I make breakfast in morning, then drive you home.”

There’s a click as Tater turns the lights off, and then a small creak when he closes the door. 

Smart boy, that one. Never asks too many questions. Bitty likes that, he decides, as he slips into a deep, drunk sleep.  
  


\\_._/

 

\\_._/

Bitty doesn’t answer Jack immediately, and the longer he waits to answer, the harder it is to pick up his phone again. Instead he takes a very long shower, warm enough to leave his skin smarting and red. It feels good, though. He woke up feeling floaty and dazed and even Tater’s upbeat conversation on the drive back to the Haus wasn’t enough to jerk him back to reality.

This helps, though. It’s grounding, and the fact that the heat steams up the bathroom enough to make the mirror completely fog up is a nice side effect. 

He dries off, brushes his teeth, and heads back into his bedroom to put on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that’s big enough that he doesn’t feel too exposed in it. And then a hoodie that he may or may not have stolen from Jack, for good measure. 

It’s still fairly early on a Sunday morning, so he’s not surprised to find no one around downstairs when he heads down to the kitchen. He’s buzzing with more energy than he’s had in weeks, so he’s hoping to get a head start on the baking he has planned for the week-- muffins to send home with the boys after practice tomorrow as an apology for how hard he’s been pushing them lately, bread to have in the Haus for sandwiches this week, and a thank-you pie for Tater, among other things.

He makes good headway on the muffins-- which is impressive, considering he intends to make well over a hundred-- before he hears voices upstairs, then the sound of one of the showers running, and then a few thuds and swearing. 

Things are quiet for just a second, until Bitty hears heavy footsteps on the stairs, then: frogs.

“Bitty!” Chowder is the first to enter, followed by the other two, both shoving to be first in the doorway and ending up decidedly stuck. 

Bitty ignores them, but smiles at Chowder. “Morning, Chowder! How was holding down the fort?”

“Uh, right. About that.” Chowder jabs his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Nursey and Dex. “It was fine until they managed to tear their shower rod out of the wall just now.”

“Hmm,” Bitty says. “Sounds like a good opportunity to replace the fixtures in there.” He has been wanting to get into that bathroom for a while to see if they can continue the general Haus remodeling project. He may or may not have a Pinterest board full of ideas saved. “I can put in an order for a few things from Home Depot, if we have enough money in the fine jar.”

“Or we make Nursey pay for it, since he’s the one who broke it,” Dex cuts in. Bitty’s not sure if he’s ever seen someone angrily pour orange juice before, but it’s the only way to describe what Dex is doing now.

“You’re the one who barged into the bathroom instead of waiting your turn,” Nursey says.

“I wouldn’t have to do that if you didn’t take five fucking years to shower.”

“So your solution was picking the lock on the door and freaking me the fuck out? You could have at least warned me that you were coming in! I had a fucking heart attack!”

“I thought you heard me!” 

Their voices are loud enough that Bitty’s ears are starting to ring. It’s possible that he’s more hungover than he had originally thought, or just out of it enough that what’s normally comforting background banter is now excruciating. He catches the oven timer in his hands and stops it just before it goes of-- he’s been doing that more lately, since the sound of the buzz always makes him jump-- and retrieves one of the trays from the top rack. 

“Boys,” Bitty says as he straightens up and sets the tray on the stovetop.. Then, when they continue to argue, he repeats it louder. “Boys!” 

This quiets them down, although Nursey keeps the palm of his hand in Dex’s face and Dex doesn’t let go of Nursey’s shirtfront.

“If you stop arguing, you can have fresh muffins. I’ll even scramble a few eggs for y’all.”

Without another word the three of them take their seats at the kitchen table. Bitty plucks a few muffins up from the rack that was already cooling and puts them on plates to serve them, and for the next few minutes they’re blissfully quiet while they chew their muffins and occupy themselves with their phones, or in Dex’s case, the morning paper he gets delivered daily to the Haus, for whatever reason. Bitty even has time to start a pot of coffee.

Then, of course, Nursey has to ruin the peaceful quiet by holding up his phone. He has the Falcs official Instagram pulled up and he’s swiped through the most recent post to find a photo of Jack and Bitty from when they arrived at the event.

“Yo, how was the party? I thought you were planning on staying the night?”

As soon as Bitty realizes what the photo is, he looks back down at the tray he’s just pulled from the oven and starts shaking muffins out onto the cooling rack. He hums in response to Nursey, which is not an answer, he supposes, but he can’t seem to gather his thoughts enough to say anything that makes sense.

“Hello?” Nursey says, after a few seconds of silence.

“Oh, it was fun, you know. The decorations were amazing and they had a haunted house sort of thing. I just wasn’t feeling very well so I left early,” Bitty says.

He must be getting some sort of sixth sense for nosy teammates, because he glances over just then to see Dex giving him a full body once-over and has to resist flinching. 

“Yeah?” Dex says. “Maybe you should go to the student health center tomorrow. You kind of look like shit.”

“Yeah, you look kind of tired,” Chowder echos. 

Right. Of course. He can’t tell if he actually looks as hideous as they’re suggesting, or if this is all just because he’s actually wearing sleep clothes down in the kitchen. He normally just doesn’t. The other boys lounge in the Haus in their sweatpants, sure, but Bitty doesn’t do that. It’s too intimate. Too sloppy.

This is the kind of thing he’d wear at home with Jack, for sure, because there’s no one who cares less about clothes than Jack. Hell, he even wears nasty old gym shorts around Jack’s apartment, even though they’re awful and make him look shorter.

Either way, Bitty just had his first full night of sleep in weeks and he apparently still looks exhausted. He really can’t win, can he? Bitty hunches his shoulders a little, then tunes out their jabbering while he starts to pour another tray of muffins. It’s nothing. They’re just looking out for him.

He feels different, though. There’s a level of comfort he’d reached here, at the Haus, at the end of last school year, and he can’t seem to find it again. Everything feels wrong where it was perfect before. It’s like some piece of his brain snapped when he wasn’t paying attention and now the pieces don’t fit back together the same way they did before.

“I think I just need some more sleep. I had a rough midterms week,” Bitty says, trying his best to keep his voice light-- happy, soft, agreeable. It’s enough to sate their curiosity, at least, and they go back to eating while he starts on the eggs.

He wants to be who he was a few months ago. He just doesn’t know  _ how.  _ What if his brain is just permanently like this now? He doesn’t know how he could stand living like that. 

\\_._/

It becomes clear within a few days that no matter what kind of silly little crisis he’s having, school doesn’t have time for it. Case in point: the F he sees in red pen at the top of the midterm for the awful science gen ed class he’s taking now after putting it off for far too long, which he gets back Tuesday morning. 

It’s kind of unfair, he thinks, as he flips through the packet and sees that he got 60% of the questions right. He might as well have just not bothered cramming for the exam in the first place, since he would have gotten the same letter grade either way. He doesn’t even have a “see me after class” note or anything of the like. He just failed, and that’s it.

He vows to do better at paying attention, but, well. He had a nightmare and only got one hour of sleep last night, and anyway, he’s never been very good at self-control, because he dozes off less than ten minutes into the class and doesn’t wake up until the professor accidentally starts a video about deep ocean life with the speaker volume turned all the way up.

A few people sitting nearby stifle snickers as Bitty jerks away, heart beating a mile a minute, and says, “Heavens!”

That’s it, though. No one comments on the fact that he’s fallen asleep in class again, despite the empty coffee cup on the table in front of him. It feels weird, because this isn’t even a lecture-- it’s a smaller class with only twenty or so students. And sure, maybe Bitty’s never really been the best student-- he’s maintained roughly a B- average throughout college, with a few C semesters-- he’s never been one to completely fall asleep in class, or fail a test this important. 

It feels weird, because in some way-- and he feels so, so silly for thinking this-- he wants someone to call him out for pretty much passing out in class. He wants someone to ask what’s going on. Bitty knows that it’s not part of his professors’ jobs to reach out when he’s struggling. It’s not like he’s an actual child still in grade school or anything like that.

(Then again, it hadn’t mattered much when he was in middle and high school, either, when he’s pretty sure it  _ was  _ his teachers’ responsibilities to reach out when he showed up ten minutes late to class with a fistful of tissues stopping up a bloody nose, or turned in a science project that someone had sharpied the word  _ fag _ onto, but they hardly ever did. And now, looking back on it, he hates himself for the raw anger he still feels toward them. It’s been years. He should be over it)

Well. That aside, he’s an adult, and this is college. He can’t expect everyone around him to baby him. 

\\_._/

Over the next few days, Bitty’s pretty sure his brain has settled down into having only two moods. The first is a frantic anxiety that hits him without warning every time, which he can’t quite exactly find the source of, because the oddest things trigger it. Wicks entering his room without warning, for example, or getting into an elevator on his way to one of his Am Studies seminars. Things like that get him all jumpy and the only thing that seems to solve it is constant distraction from his friends, which isn’t exactly something he can demand 24/7. 

The other extreme is what happens when he comes down from that, or any other time, which kind of feels like he’s sleepwalking, except he’s not getting any sleep. The best thing he can compare it to is when he’s trying to do a reading and just can’t seem to get his mind to focus on it, except this time, it’s like he can’t focus on life in general. Talking, walking, homework, hockey-- any of it. He’s making stupid mistakes everywhere lately because he just can’t seem to concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds.

He doesn’t realize how obvious he’s being about these moods, though, until Shruti calls him three times in a row while he’s at practice one morning the next week. He finds his phone still buzzing with the last call just as he’s taking off his pads, but he truly can’t bring himself to answer it. The idea of talking to someone right now is exhausting and he’d much rather text her while he listens to his teammates chatter around him. So instead he shoots her a text.

 

Well-- he had been trying to write an essay, although he didn’t get more than a page written, and had eventually submitted the one page and the outline he’d created instead of the final essay, since it was due at six in the morning and he knew he wasn’t going to finish. Better to submit an outline and part of a semi-coherent essay than nothing at all, he supposed. 

He’d just hit a weird mood around three where he felt kind of like he was dying. As in, his breathing went all funny, and then his heart was racing, and also, why was his throat so dry? He was so tempted to just yell out for one of the boys to come and sit with him, but he hadn’t wanted to wake them up when they had early practice in a few hours, so he’d just opened his phone and messaged the last person he’d texted, which had happened to be Shruti.

 

See? Lying. It’s as easy as that. 

\\_._/

Face-to-face conversations are hard, but phone calls, he can do-- as long as he’s not in one of those awful moods where he has zero energy. On an okay day, he just needs to get settled down with something to do with his hands and pitch his voice the right way, and then he can pretend like things are fine again. 

Today it’s peeling apples in preparation for his Thanksgiving pies while his phone sits on the table in front of him, speaker on while he gives Jack the full rundown of the menu he’s got planned. He’s maybe going into too much detail, but oh well. It’s important to get some outside opinions on his plans, because he’s been so forgetful lately. What if he completely missed an essential dish? It would be awful. 

“I mean, the green bean casserole is a necessity, of course, but I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not enough for the amount of guests we’ve got coming, which is why I’m planning on the other one too. I certainly don’t want anyone going hungry, and it’s always good to have variety. As long as it’s not too much variety, since that’ll just take away from the overall theme,” he’s saying, rounding out a several minute-long explanation of the casserole choices. 

“Bits.”

“But I don’t know. I’m just not a huge fan of a casserole that heavy, but maybe that’s just me? The boys definitely liked it last year, though, so I think I’m going to include it anyway, since it rounds out the main course nicely--”

“Bits, please.” Jack says. “Take a breath.”

Finally, Bitty does. He hadn’t realized how into his rant he’d gotten. He’s almost lightheaded, which is weird because that usually only happens when he’s standing up. “Oof. Sorry, honey.”

“You good? That was longer than usual. I lost track of what you were talking about.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to hear my menu plans?” Bitty asks, half chirping, half trying to feel out if Jack’s actually getting annoyed, because ‘I lost track’ is usually Jack code for  _ I’m getting bored _ . “You know, for five thousand dollars, you can buy my silence permanently.”

“Oh?” Jack asks. Bitty can hear the smile in his tone. “I thought you weren’t dating me for my money, eh?”

“You got me,” Bitty says, playfully, then yelps. He’s nicked his thumb with his peeler. Again. Really, where is his common sense today?

“What happened? Are you okay?” Jack asks, his voice rising an octave. 

“Oh, shush. I’m fine. I dropped one of my apples,” Bitty says, standing slowly-- stars in his eyes, lightheaded, feeling floaty again-- and stepping over to the sink to run his thumb under the water.

“Ah,” Jack says. “Feed it to the boys. They won’t know the difference.”

Bitty sits back down with a paper towel wrapped tightly over his thumb. There will be no contamination in his kitchen. “You’re a menace, Mr. Zimmermann. Now-- where was I? Oh! Desserts.”

\\_._/

\\_._/

Here’s how Thanksgiving Day passes: 

Jack’s eyes on Bitty, roving, scanning, processing. The downturn of his lip when he sees that Bitty looks like he hasn’t slept or eaten in days, because, well. Maybe that’s true, but he looks cute in his khakis and little orange sweater, dammit, and maybe Jack’s still getting used to how he looks because it’s the first time they’ve seen each other in person in nearly three weeks, but still. Right now Bitty looks more put together than he has in that entire time period.

Jack’s hands, protective, around Bitty’s shoulders, on the itchy arm of the sweater, circling around his waist while he tries to put finishing touches on dinner in the kitchen, getting in the way of Bitty’s process until Bitty shoos him out with a bottle of wine to start pouring for the dinner guests.

Jack’s mouth close to his ear, murmuring variations of, “Are you okay? Still alright? Feeling good?” all throughout dinner, despite Bitty’s nods and hums of agreement while he makes his way through a small plate of turkey and the tiniest pile of mashed potatoes.

That same mouth, sweet from the pie Jack’s just finished, pressing kisses to Bitty’s own mouth, down his jaw, to his neck, lower, and lower. 

Sex, with a hastily thrown-together playlist to cover up the noise and avoid the worst of the fines from the boys. It’s sweet and intimate and emotionally exhausting, so it’s no surprise that Bitty falls asleep before Jack’s even returned from the bathroom to get a wet washcloth to wipe them clean and a glass of water to keep on the nightstand.

A cold bed the next morning, and a small handwritten note full of affection and the message that Jack hadn’t wanted to wake Bitty up before he’d left to drive back to Providence for practice, because of course he has practice the day after Thanksgiving. Of course. 

\\_._/

__   


\\_._/

Bitty can’t see anything, but he can feel the pressure of four walls on either side of him, barely wider than the width of his shoulders. He feels paralyzed-- he can’t get out of this box, can’t call for help, can’t even breathe. He’s going to die here. 

No-- not true. He can blink, and after his eyes start to clear he sees a few thin slits of light inches in front of his face, and he heaves the weight of his full body forward to slowly, slowly fall through the front of the box and onto the ground outside of it, which is concrete and hurts his hand and knees as he make contact with it and looks up at the figure standing in front of him.

It’s Jack, tall, looming. He’s got skates on and Bitty doesn’t even have time to flinch before he’s skating forward on the concrete and smoothly gliding over Bitty’s fingers-- god, what just happened? Are they okay? Bitty looks down at them and immediately regrets it, but thankfully he’s distracted from that mess when Jack picks him up by the collar of his shirt and slams him back into the box, the locker, and shuts the door again. 

Now, the walls start to close in. Bitty can feel them press against his shoulders, then his chest, and now even harder against his skull, so firm that he’s sure it’s about to crack, and only now can he finally, finally open his mouth and scream.

That’s when he feels hands all over his body.

What started as a guttural scream quickly turns into begging as Bitty thrashes back and forth, in the box, out of the box, in his sheets--

“Stop! Stop!” he’s yelling when he wakes up, but the hands don’t go away as he jerks out of his sleep and sits up, throwing up his arms and shoving the hands away. He scoots away and scrambles to find something to hold onto and finds himself gripping the edge of the bed, and once he’s able to find that leverage it makes it easy to throw himself off it in seconds, landing on the ground with a bone-rattling thud.

He needs to get away so he tries to stand, but as soon as he’s on his feet he pitches forward, and then hands are on him again, holding him upright, and he yells again, trying to pull away and encountering resistance when the hands only hold him closer. Bitty gives one last yell and swings his elbow up to make contact with the person’s chin.

“Fuck, ow,” the owner of the hands says. “This isn’t helping. Should we call an ambulance?”

Then, a few feet away: “Bitty, please. You’re safe. It’s just us.”

That’s Nursey’s voice, Bitty realizes, his head finally starting to clear. And Dex’s hands around him, holding him upright. That’s the worst part-- he blinks a few times and as his lights adjust to the room, he sees that he’s surrounded by the three frogs in various states of awakeness, all looking very concerned.

Shit. He must have screamed loud enough to bring them all running. “Fuck,” he says quietly, under his breath. “Fuck.”

“Hey, let’s sit down,” Chowder says, shooting the other two a look and sitting on the edge of the bed as they back off. Bitty shakes when Dex lets go of him, but manages to flop back onto the bare mattress next to Chowder. He must have been moving enough to pull off the fitted sheet.

“Nightmare” he says, realizing only now just how out of breath he is. “Sorry. Bad nightmare.”

“You were screaming. We thought someone came in and tried to murder you,” Chowder says, which kind of feels like what just happened, if the adrenaline coursing through Bitty’s veins is anything to go by. He thought he was being attacked, for sure. 

He thought that  _ they  _ were attacking him. 

“What the  _ hell  _ do you think you were doing?” Bitty hisses, when he’s caught his breath a few seconds later. “You can’t just come into my room like that, especially not when I’m having a nightmare. 

“Huh. Told you,” Nursey says, jabbing an elbow at Dex.

“No-- you all did this,” Bitty says, pulling up his sheets to cover himself. He’s wearing shorts and a t-shirt, but he might as well be naked, because that’s how he feels right now. “I’m sick and tired of you three butting in where you don’t belong. You need to get your noses out of my business and let me live my life.” 

“Bitty,” Dex says. “We had to wake you up. You were freaking out.”

“That’s not your problem!” Bitty says, raising his voice enough that it starts to feel scratchy. Is he yelling? Maybe he is. Maybe they deserve it. “I’m an adult and I don’t want  _ anyone  _ coming in here unannounced. This is my space. Leave me the  _ fuck _ alone,” he says, and then he’s pushing again-- pushing them back out the door, locking it, and slumping to the ground with his back against it and ignoring their muffled, worried voices outside.

There. Good riddance.

\\_._/

\\_._/

This leads him into December.

Bitty leaves his room for the first time in two days (barring bathroom trips, of course) on the first day of the month and finds Shitty in his kitchen, sipping something from a travel mug and tapping away at his laptop. He’s surrounded by what Bitty supposes must be law textbooks, and the mere sight of books that large almost makes him shudder.

“You don’t live here,” Bitty says as he retrieves a box of saltines from the cupboard. He thinks he only sounds a little bit accusatory and congratulates himself on the fact, because right now the only thing he feels is vitriol toward anyone and anything. Hence why it’s been easier to stay in his room-- he doesn’t have the energy to be nice. He just feels petty. 

“Astute,” Shitty says. “And you don’t usually skip classes, but here we are.”

Hmm. Bitty pulls his phone out of the front pocket of his hoodie and turns it on. It is, in fact, a Wednesday, which is a new piece of information to him. “I only have two classes today, anyway,” he says, shaking a small pile of crackers out onto a napkin. Bon appetit, he thinks to himself, then snickers. 

“Do you know why I’m here?” Shitty asks, as Bitty carefully balances his napkin-plate of saltines and walks over to the table.

He sits down across from Shitty and pops one in his mouth. “No,” he says, after he’s slowly chewed and swallowed it.

“Excellent. I’m here because all of us are fucking terrified for you, Bits. You’re not acting like yourself at all.”

“Mmhmm,” Bitty hums, having another cracker. These are pretty good, but he’s going to need water soon, he thinks. He wonders where his water bottle went. He thinks it might be in his gym bag, but he’s not sure where that is, either. He wishes he wasn’t so forgetful.

“Bits. Jack called me up again for the third night in a row last night because you haven’t texted him in days and he’s been so worried sick that he can’t sleep.”

“It hasn’t been days,” Bitty says, weakly, although he’s mentally chastising himself for not being more careful about how he talks to Jack. He doesn’t want to make him worry. That’s the whole point.

“Days,” Shitty repeats, unwavering. Bitty has a feeling that if he checks his phone, he’ll find that Shitty is right, so he drops the issue.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll text him later.”

“Why not now?” Shitty asks, shutting his laptop cover, the movement very deliberate. This is clearly all a setup, down to Shitty pretending to be doing law school work. Ollie and Wicks both have Wednesday mornings off and they usually spend that time at the Haus, so their absence means that at least everyone at the Haus is in on this. “It shouldn’t be a chore to text your boyfriend, brah,” Shitty says.

For whatever reason, this is what finally makes it click for Bitty.

No, it shouldn’t be a chore. This isn’t fair. This isn’t fair at all, and he needs to fix it as soon as he can. There’s no use in drawing it out any longer. He just needs to rip off the bandaid. 

“Oh, Lord,” he says, standing up quickly enough that the kitchen chair goes flying, tumbling onto its back. Bitty doesn’t even flinch at the noise of it hitting the ground. “I need to go to Providence,” he says.

“That’s the spirit,” Shitty says. “Now, how about we--”

And that’s all Bitty hears, because he’s already grabbed a fistful of cash from the sin bin on the kitchen counter, stuffed his feet into the pair of boots he keeps by the front door of the Haus, and dashed outside.

\\_._/

\\_._/

One train ride later, Bitty’s phone is dead. He must not have charged it recently, which he supposes makes sense, because he’s barely been using it, so he wouldn’t have thought to plug it in. What this means is that he has no way to order an Uber or call Jack when he gets to the Providence station, so he resorts to the next best thing, which is walking.

It’s nearly an hour-long walk. He’s no expert on the streets of Providence, but he and Jack did a lot of walking over the summer when Bitty was living with him, and he has a good idea of what general direction to go in. Sure enough, he gradually finds familiar landmarks that lead him to the neighborhood in which Jack’s apartment building is located. 

It’s a nice walk because his mind seems to have fully switched onto autopilot. He can feel his heart pounding in his chest, reverberating up to his skull with each step he takes, but his thoughts have stopped racing. He’s fixing things. Things are going to be better now. 

It feels like only seconds have passed by the time that Bitty stumbles into Jack’s building, rushing past the doorman and getting onto the elevator, where he stands for about three minutes before he realizes he hasn’t pushed the floor button. He finally fumbles for it with shaking hands and shoots up toward the seventh floor. 

_ Ding. _

He gets out and stumbles in the direction of Jack’s door, veering dangerously to the left before regaining his footing and leaning against the wall until he makes it down the hall and lightly taps his fist against the door.

Silence. 

Then footsteps.

Then Jack.

“Bits?” Jack asks, looking sleepy at first, like he does when he’s just woken up from a nap (does he have a game today? Bitty can’t remember), then with widening eyes. “Bits, are you okay?” 

“Jack,” Bitty says, bracing himself against the doorway, which is easier now that the door is open. If he just holds his arms out he can stay upright, which is becoming harder with each passing second.

“You look like you’re about to pass out. Where’s your coat? It’s well below zero-- have you been walking outside?” Jack reaches out, warm arms beckoning, but Bitty pulls away, back out into the hallway. No tricks this time. No temptation.

“Jack, I need to tell you--”

“Please come inside, Bits, I’m worried--” 

“Jack!” Bitty shouts, and this finally shuts him up. “We can’t keep doing this,” he says. “I think we should break up.”

Again, silence. Then, the world comes rushing back at Bitty, or more specifically, the ground does, and then he’s surrounded by warm hands again, catching him awkwardly before he can hit the ground.

Then they’re both on the floor, Jack sitting with his legs crossed and Bitty half on his lap, half off of it, and Bitty cannot for the life of him figure out how they got there, but he slumps forward into Jack’s chest because he’s warm and Bitty is only just now feeling how very, very cold he is. What gives it away is the excruciating pain in his fingertips, now so used to being numb, as they begin to un-thaw.  Bitty bites his tongue to keep from whimpering at the pain and tries to distract himself by looking up at Jack.

Jack, who is crying, maybe-- or some Jack version of crying where his eyes are red-rimmed with tears that haven’t fallen. As Bitty watches, Jack takes a deep breath and tips Bitty’s chin up to keep his eye contact. “You’re right,” Jack says.

Bitty doesn’t answer that. He doesn’t think he has the ability to speak right now.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Jack says. “Something needs to change.”

And now Bitty wants to say no, because that’s not Jack agreeing to break up, which is what Bitty wanted. He’s giving Jack a way out. He’s not trying to get Jack to be so  _ chivalrous  _ and  _ caring.  _ But his mouth, like all other parts of him right now, is frozen shut.

“Bits, this month has been awful,” Jack says, pulling him close. “I don’t know how else to show you how much I love you and want to be with you, but you’ve just been pulling away from me. I was worried you thought I was moving too fast. I mean-- I’ve dragged you into this media mess.”

No, Bitty thinks. That was both of us. We both wanted this. 

“It’s not  _ normal  _ to be in the spotlight this much, bud. Especially for your first relationship.”

No. He can handle it. He can do it, for Jack. For the sake of not hiding anymore. He wants to do it. He can. He can. He can.

“I love you,” Jack says.

“I love you,” Bitty says back, but it comes out as a quiet, incoherent mumble against Jack’s chest.

“You’re hurting,” Jack says. “And you have been for a while.” 

And it’s there, on the entryway floor of Jack’s apartment, exhibiting mild hypothermia and about three minutes away from passing out again, that Bitty finally lets himself sob, because that’s the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this is a very small thing but you may notice that when the frogs suggest that Bitty visit the student health center, they tell him to go "tomorrow," meaning Monday, because at my school the health center isn't open on weekends. Is that normal??? Are college students really only allowed to be sick on weekdays?
> 
> Another pertinent note: when Jack says it's below zero outside, he means in Celsius.
> 
> Chapter title from "December" by Neck Deep, which is a very emo song, even for them.
> 
> Next chapter will probably be posted in a week or so, give or take, and we are officially moving into the comfort territory, if I can figure out how to make that happen. In the meantime, come visit me on Tumblr where I'm @hockeydyke, or Twitter where I'm @sydneykz12.


	3. put the pieces back together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's easier to get started on the path to recovery with a little bit of help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO sorry about how long I took to post this final chapter. In my defense: my laptop bit the dust and I was left without a computer for about a month, and it was also midterms season. I finally forced myself to sit down at a coffee shop (Politics and Prose in DC!) last week to crank out the conclusion to this, so here it is. Hope you enjoy. :)
> 
> Warnings for a hospitalization in this chapter-- for physical ailments.

Bitty’s been blinking his wet eyes into Jack’s shoulder for a few minutes when Jack shifts and starts to pull away, which is not very nice. He’s been violently shaking against Jack’s chest and now he’s starting to hiccup. Jack moving even a few inches away is like losing his personal furnace.

In response, he whines, “Jack,” but it doesn’t do much. Jack is untangling himself and Bitty’s limbs are numb enough that he can’t manage to hold onto him as he stands and takes a few step over to the table in the entryway where his keys live.

“I’m going to carry you out to the car, bud. You don’t need to do anything right now,” he says, voice soft.

Bitty scrunches up his face, because he doesn’t want to go back to the Haus. He’s felt so stuffy and trapped there that he knows it’ll make him feel worse right now. “Don’t want to,” he says, weakly. His lips move, but he’s not sure if he actually says it loud enough for Jack to hear. He clears his throat and tries again. “I want to stay with you,” he says, and it feels like he’s yelling.

“What?” Jack’s arms are around him again now as he first wraps a thick blanket around Bitty and then lifts him, bridal style. “I’ll stay with you. We’re just going to the emergency room, okay? Trust me. I know hypothermia symptoms.”

Bitty doesn’t answer that because Jack’s arms are very comfortable. Bitty’s head is tucked close enough to his chest that he can feel his steady heartbeat. It soothes him into something close to sleep.

\\_._/

Several things happen next, and they all seem to be designed solely to annoy Bitty.

First there’s the waiting room, where they seem to spend about an hour. It’s probably Bitty’s least favorite place in the world, because he has just the barest semblance of common sense to know that it’ll look ridiculous if he, an adult man, continues to sit on Jack’s lap in one of the small padded chairs while they wait-- but God, he wants to. Instead he gives in a little bit and sits in the chair next to Jack while holding his hand like a vice.

Jack is annoying in his own right. He quietly leans over every few minutes, around the time when Bitty is just starting to doze off, to ask him questions and just generally be a nuisance. There’s a point at which Bitty closes his eyes and starts to hum non-committal responses and Jack goes as far as to reach out and poke his arm.

Bitty’s eyes snap open and he swats at Jack’s hand. “You _menace,”_ he says.

Jack grins and kisses his cheek, and it’s then that a nurse finally calls them back. Before Bitty can protest Jack has scooped him up again and he’s bobbing in the air through a bright hallway until they’re led to a room where Jack gently places him on a cot.

The nurse is annoying too, asking Bitty questions upon questions. Bitty can recognize that she’s doing her job, yes, and he’d normally be polite as can be to her, but he just can’t bring himself to care right now. He wants to sleep and he doesn’t care about anyone else’s feelings right now.

At some point he can feel the prick of an IV entering his arm, and there are more blankets on him now, but at the cost of more nurses and more questions. He rolls over onto his side and stops answering them, so Jack takes over, mumbling quiet answers that Bitty doesn’t bother to listen to. They’ll wake him up if there’s anything Jack doesn’t know how to answer.

They do, in fact. The nurses have only been gone for a few minutes when a doctor enters and gently shakes him awake. Bitty expects more questions about how long he was outside and what he was wearing and if he’s experiencing confusion, but this doctor looks him in the eye and asks him if he’s been intentionally losing weight lately.

Bitty stares at him, blank, and doesn’t answer.

The doctor leans in and asks again, dropping his heavy hand to rest on Bitty’s own, which has been sitting on top of the blankets so the nurses have access to the IV. Bitty jerks it away and says, “No.”

“Is that a no to my question?” the doctor asks, quickly withdrawing his hand and glancing back to where Jack has jumped to his feet at Bitty’s bedside, bristling.

“Get out,” Bitty says, and once Jack gives the doctor a sharp look, he leaves the room.

Another doctor makes her way in a few minutes later, but she keeps her distance as she reviews the notes that the nurses have already taken on the clipboard hanging on the wall near Bitty’s cot. She has pen in hand and she chews thoughtfully on the end of it as she reads, then hangs the clipboard back up.

“Mr. Bittle,” she says, then makes a smooth motion with her hand in Jack’s direction, indicating for him to stand up. “I’m going to have to ask your partner to leave for a few minutes. We can discuss things in detail with you once we’ve had a chance to work a few things out first, Mr…” she trails off, still looking at Jack.

“Zimmermann,” Jack says, then glances at Bitty. Bitty can see that his hands are shaking as he reaches out and brushes Bitty’s bangs from his forehead. Gosh, he hasn’t gotten a haircut in a while. “Is that okay, bud?”

Bitty bites his lip. He wants to be honest with Jack.

There’s always gonna be something easier about rambling on to a stranger who he doesn’t feel any obligation to please. The problem is that he loves Jack enough that he wants to lie to him. He doesn’t want Jack to worry.

“Of course, honey. We’ll call you back in just a minute, okay?” he says, taking hold of Jack’s sleeve and pulling him close enough to kiss his cheek. “You can try to find me some water while you’re out.”

Jack looks hesitant, but he’s enough of a rule stickler that he leaves as told.

Bitty turns back to the doctor, who has settled down in the chair where Jack was sitting. It’s now as he looks closer that he realizes her ID is hanging on a Providence Falconers lanyard. He feels the barest ghost of a smile flit across his face-- she knew who Jack was. Bitty appreciates that she didn’t make a big deal out of seeing him.

“Alright,” she says. “I’m Dr. Murphy. Now, I’m just going to ask you to honestly answer a few questions for me about how you’ve been feeling lately. After that, I’m probably going to refer you to a specialist who can help you out, but once we’re done with that I’m going to send you home so you can get some rest. Sound good?”

Well. There’s a lot of layers to that middle bit there, but-- Bitty can work with it. He thinks.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s get started, then.”  


\\_._/

Bitty leaves the hospital with a packet of discharge instructions, a normal body temperature, and a business card for a psychologist not far from campus. In lieu of telling Jack anything, he simply hands over the card and watches him cradle it in that large hand while fumbling with his seatbelt buckle in the other.

It’s a quiet little moment, but it feels like a shift, like Bitty’s entire life is rearranging itself in some subtle giant way. Jack’s the one who sees a therapist, not him. Jack’s the one who has panic attacks and nervous breakdowns, not him. Bitty is supposed to be his anchor.

But not now. Now it's Bitty who's untethered. It’s a paradigm shift.

“Euh,” Jack says, which is endearing. “Oh-- oh. I’ve heard of her. She’s one of the ones my therapist from Montreal suggested for me.”

“But you Skype your therapist,” Bitty says.

“We weren’t sure how well that would work at first,” Jack said. “She wanted me to have a backup. I just never needed one.”

“Mm,” Bitty says, taking the card back. “If I tell you I’ll call her tomorrow to get on the waitlist for an appointment, can you actually hold me to that?”

“I’ll get you a fancy Starbucks drink if you do it,” Jack says.

“I like the sound of that,” Bitty says. “You have a green light.”

“Oh,” Jack says. He’s still kind of in a state of shock, Bitty thinks. That’s okay. He is too.

\\_._/

“Chowder and Farmer really frustrate me sometimes,” Bitty says, when Jack returns to their nest of blankets and pillows on the couch. He has a mug of hot chocolate in each hand and he sets them on the coffee table without finding coasters first, which irks Bitty a little but not enough to say anything.

“What?” Jack asks. To be fair, it was kind of out of the blue. Bitty tilts his phone to show Jack Chowder’s latest Instagram post, which shows a selfie of the two of them cuddled up at a Christmas light show that Bitty knows Chowder’s been talking about for weeks. It has less than a hundred likes and only a few comments.

“I don’t know,” Bitty says, but-- well. He does know, and he wants Jack to understand, so he shrugs and tries again. “I think I used to be jealous of them last year. Really jealous. And then I felt bad for being jealous.”

“Did you like Chowder?” Jack asks, and Bitty laughs.

“Oh, gosh, no. That’s not what I mean.”

“So you were just jealous of them being together?”

“I guess so. I think I still kind of resent Chowder for that.”

“For being in a relationship?”

“For being happy in one, yeah. It just feels like he got the perfect college romance as soon as he got here. And…” Bitty trails off because Jack has finally stopped standing stationary like a dork and sat down, and he wants to snuggle up against his side.

“And you don’t think he’s gone through enough to deserve it?”

And that’s exactly it, isn’t it? Bitty presses his face against Jack’s shoulder and nods. “Isn’t that messed up?” he asks, wanting Jack to agree with him. He just wants Jack to understand him, to see him, to know how mean he is, deep inside. He gets irrationally angry at other people because he wasn't good enough to find someone who likes him until he was twenty.

Instead, Jack just hums, not in agreement, but in thought. “Do you still think that?

Bitty shakes his head no. “I don’t think he needed to do anything to deserve a relationship. I don’t know. I think it really is just jealousy.

“But you are in a relationship,” Jack says. “Do you wish that our relationship was more like theirs?”

Does Bitty wish that his relationship wasn’t the topic of what feels like an exponentially increasing amount of fan accounts? Does he wish that people didn’t still find ways to send him hate messages every day? Does he wish they didn’t get sharp looks when they’re out together and hold hands?

He wouldn’t trade Jack for the world. But. But.

“I think that’s not really the issue,” Bitty says. “I think I just-- spent too much time being bitter and convinced that I was never going to date anyone. I mean, I came out as soon as I came to college, but I still didn’t click with anyone. I think it’s still just really hard for me to believe that I can love someone, or be loved by someone, I guess.”

“Oh,” Jack says, then pulls him close. “Bits. I don’t know how I can fix that for you. But I do love you,” he says.

Bitty nods. It’s hard to believe. But Jack says it with an earnestness that means he believes it.

“I think maybe a therapist is a really good idea,” Jack says, carefully. He keeps one arm wrapped around Bitty and tugs him along as he leans over to pick up one of the mugs from the coffee table and place it in Bitty’s hands.

Bitty laughs at that, then leans his face down close enough to feel the heat wafting up from the mug. “That’s a very nice way of telling me you think I’m crazy, sweetpea.”

“Hey,” Jack says. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

“No,” Bitty says, taking a sip.

“Then don’t talk about my boyfriend that way,” Jack says, affectionate enough that Bitty can’t help but lean up and kiss him firmly. They do that for a few minutes, nothing steamy, but intimate. And by the time they’re done, Bitty is exhausted enough that he lets Jack carry him to bed and falls into a deep, deep sleep.

\\_._/

In the end, Bitty calls the number on the business card even before Jack gets home from practice the next day. It’s not really that he wants to deal with any of the shit he knows this lady is going to want him to talk about. It’s not that he knows Jack is going to sit down and stare earnestly and painfully at him while he schedules the important.

Really, it’s just that Bitty is kind of fed up with feeling like shit. He doesn’t think this is going to fix that, but he figures that anything is better than what he’s doing right now.

(Plus, he’s pretty sure that his professors will answer a lot more kindly to written confirmation from a mental health professional that he has a kind of valid reason for missing class for almost a week straight. Not that Bitty is convinced that he really does have a reason other than being lazy and miserable, but Jack seems convinced that they’ll be willing to give him extensions if he has a doctor note, and Bitty has done the math and knows he’s close enough to flunking the entire semester that he needs all the help he can get)

He almost calls right when he wakes up, when Jack is still on his run, but of course he realizes as he starts dialing that there’s probably no one in the office at half past six in the morning, so he drops his phone back down to get lost in the sheets and tries to go back to sleep. He tosses and turns for a bit, mushing his face up against the pillow and tossing off the blankets when he gets too hot. He’s just about reached his wit’s end when he hears the front door opening as Jack enters the apartment.

A few seconds later, Jack enters the bedroom. He’s kicked off those awful yellow sneakers, thank God, but he’s still sweaty and panting heavily. It must have been a good, long run, then.

“Come snuggle,” Bitty says, and Jack startles, clearly not expecting him to be awake.

“If I snuggle now, you’re going to complain that I smell,” he says, leaning one arm against the dresser so he can peel off his nasty socks. They’re soaking wet from sweat.

Bitty huffs because it’s true. “Fine,” he says. “Shower, then come snuggle.”

“You get half an hour of snuggle before I have to get ready for practice,” Jack says.

“I suppose that’s acceptable,” Bitty says with a sigh. “Be quick. I’ll warm up your side of the bed for you.”

Jack is quick-- quick enough that he’s barely even bothered trying to dry off at all when he slides into bed, and Bitty yelps and shoves him back down again when he feels a few drops of water from Jack’s hair. “Stop it! That’s cold!” he says, then roughouses with Jack for a minute before finally giving up and letting him wrap his damp arms around Bitty’s waist.

“You’re the worst,” he says. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Jack says. “But I really do need to make breakfast before I get going to practice.”

Bitty pouts, but starts to sit up. “Okay,” he says. “Eggs and toast with jam? And one of your nasty protein shakes, of course.”

“You know, I could make breakfast,” Jack says. “I could make breakfast for both of us, even.”

“Nonsense,” Bitty says, shivering a little as he crawls out of the sheets. Does hypothermia last multiple days? The North is a cruel place, so he wouldn’t be surprised.

“Really, bud,” Jack says, using that firm voice that Bitty is growing to hate. “That’s not your job. I’m an adult. I really don’t like it when you put making me food before feeding yourself.”

Bitty goes still, then sighs. “Okay. You make eggs. I make toast. We both eat eggs and toast. Fair?” It’s not what he wants, but he supposes it’s a compromise he can make. He’s not feeling awful today-- not nauseous or anything, like he gets sometimes.

Jack nods. “I can work with that,” he says, then sweeps Bitty up into his arms again.

“Jack! I’m not a sack of potatoes, mister” he says, gently pounding his fists against Jack’s back to no avail. “Put me down,” he says weakly, and Jack does-- just, not until they’ve made it to the kitchen.

They settle down for a relaxed breakfast. Bitty manages a small plate of eggs and a jam-slathered slice of toast. Jack manages-- well, Jack polishes about five eggs and a full stack of toast, which isn’t even that much for him. Jack tries to manhandle him away from the sink when he gets up to do the dishes, but after a little bit of wrestling Bitty manages to rinse off their plates and send Jack back to the bedroom to get dressed for practice.

“Oh-- do you want to text me your Starbucks order?” Jack asks, just as Bitty is ushering him out the door. “I think they have all the holiday drinks out now.”

“Oh my lord, Jack” Bitty says, putting Jack’s bag in his hands and standing on his tiptoes to fit a tocque over his head. “Yes, I’ll text you. Now skedaddle! You’re already late!”

Jack chuckles and Bitty can hear him start to repeat the word ‘skedaddle’ as he shuts the door, then turns around so he can sit on the couch and stare at the business card for a bit.

Well. Bitty may be a coward, but he’s always been pretty okay at making phone calls.

It’s funny, he thinks, as soon as a man’s voice answers with a chipper, “Good morning!” For whatever reason, he’d expected the woman listed on the card to be the one to answer. It makes perfect sense that she has a receptionist to take care of scheduling.

“Hello?” the receptionist is saying. “Are you still there?”

“Oh! Heavens, sorry. I’m a little out of it today,” Bitty says, as if he has not been out of it every day lately. “I’m calling to schedule an appointment because, um-- Dr. Murphy from Miriam Hospital in Providence referred me?”

“Right,” the voice says. “Are you located in Providence? Because that’s a little far, and we could definitely direct you to someone--”

“No! I’m at Samwell, actually. For at least the next six months or so. I’m sure there’s some kind of waitlist, but-- well. I’ve had a couple people recommend Ms. Walker to me, and I think I’d like to see how we work together.” That’s pretty much what Jack had suggested he say.

They set up an appointment for Bitty to meet the therapist and talk to her for a bit, just a little preliminary appointment. By the time that he hangs up the phone it’s only been a few minutes, but he feels absolutely drained. He sighs and tosses his phone onto the coffee table, fishing the remote from the couch cushions and turning on TLC. It’s a Friday. He should be in class, but here he is moping on Jack’s couch.

A voice that sounds like Jack’s gently scolds him in his head. It’s a mental health day. He doesn’t really feel like he’s done anything to deserve it, but-- well, he’s already skipped so much school that one more day probably won’t make a huge difference.

Two hours of lying on the couch and scrolling through his Pinterest feed must actually do him some good, though, because he does feel marginally better by the time Jack gets home. Jack has a peppermint mocha in hand and a flush from being out in the cold across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, and Bitty springs up from the couch to give him a kiss.

“Oh, hi,” Jack says, a little startled, although he ducks his head down and meets Bitty’s lips for a quick kiss.

“I called. They put me in for an appointment next week on Wednesday,” Bitty says, then kisses Jack again because he really doesn’t to hear any praise for doing something so simple.

Jack manages to pull away after a few seconds, though, and give Bitty a smile. “Proud of you, bud. Want your coffee, then?”

“Of course,” Bitty says, taking it in both hands. Jack probably stopped by the Starbucks right across the street from the rink before driving back here, so it’s had about ten minutes to cool down. It’s the perfect temperature for him to take a long gulp.

“Happy with it?” Jack asks.

“Absolutely,” Bitty says. “Want a taste?”

Jack nods, and instead of offering him the cup, Bitty sets it down on the entryway table and stands on his tiptoes to give Jack an open-mouthed kiss. Jack’s used to this by now and he automatically ducks his head to help Bitty reach his mouth. They kiss for a few seconds before Bitty drops his hands to Jack’s waist, sliding them under his shirt to rest on the warm, bare skin there. He slowly lifts his hands, trying to pull Jack’s hoodie up and over his head, but Jack starts to squirm and lowers his arms over Bitty’s to stop him.

“Mm,” Jack says, voice muffled as he pulls away from the kiss. “I think we should bake something,” he says, once he’s pulled away and looking down at Bitty. His entire face is red now and his lips are even redder.

Bitty has a half a mind to kiss him again, but he resists the temptation. Jack is not fantastic at saying no, but Bitty knows him well enough to understand that he’s redirecting because he doesn’t want this right now.

“Okay, hon. What do you want?” he asks.

“I don’t know what I have ingredients for right now,” he says. “Something sweet?”

As Bitty sidles around Jack so he can pick up his coffee again, he can’t help but smile. “Of course you want something sweet. If saw you have a carton of blueberries in the fridge-- I think it should be enough for a pie, as long as you weren’t planning on using them for anything else?”

“Blueberry pie is good,” Jack says. “I can get the crust ready if you want to work on the filling?”

“You sure know how to impress a boy, Mr. Zimmermann,” Bitty says. “We’ll see if you can do the crust without help.”

“Hey,” Jack says, soft. He’s already getting the ingredients from the shelves that are just a tad too high for Bitty to reach without standing on his tiptoes. “I’m getting better.”

“Sure you are,” Bitty says, although it’s true. Jack’s becoming an entirely passable baking assistant and Bitty is very proud of him.

They work quietly for a few minutes. Jack’s low on a few ingredients, but Bitty supposes he can’t blame him, because he hasn’t been around to add all his various needs to Jack’s grocery lists lately. They’re getting good at sharing the kitchen, stepping around each other to avoid collisions and stopping for kisses and gentle shoves every few minutes. It’s only when the pie is in the oven and they’ve both sat at the island, Bitty offering Jack a spoonful of leftover filling, that Jack speaks again.

“Bits?” he starts, handing the spoon back to Bitty and frowning when Bitty shakes his head no. “This is going to be a weird question.”

“You ask me lots of weird questions, honey.”

Jack grunts. “Okay. Well. Do you eat what you bake?”

This whole thing suddenly feels like a set-up. Bitty doesn’t even want to answer him, so for a minute, he doesn’t. He just drops the spoon back into the mixing bowl and gets up to set it in the sink. He’ll wash the dishes later. Or more accurately, Jack will probably do it.

After a minute, Jack comes up behind him and wraps his arms around his waist. “Hey,” he says, quiet. “I know you heard me.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Bitty snaps.

“I honestly just want you to answer the question.”

Bitty takes a deep breath and shakes Jack off. He’s not in the mood for _anything_ now. Jack pulls away sharply and backs up, turning to pick up a washcloth and start wiping down the countertop.

After a few seconds, Bitty sighs and attempts to release some of the tension he's holding in his shoulders. He feels like he’s all wound up tight, like a spring. “No,” he says, through gritted teeth. “I generally do not.”

“Why?”

“Well,” Bitty starts, then stops. He waits a few seconds, hoping that his silence will get Jack to back off, but when he turns to glance at him, he’s staring at Bitty with those eyes. “Don’t look at me like that, honey. I just don’t, okay? I never really have, that much. Sweets were always off-limits for me."

“Off-limits? Who said that?”

“Well, nobody said it outright. It’s just one of those things, you know?”

Jack makes a face. “I don’t know.”

Bitty sighs. “Of course you don’t. It’s just. I’ve been worrying about my body for so long, you know? It’s dumb because I always go back in forth. When I was figure skating, I was always worried about being too big, because of course you have to watch your weight. But then when I quit, it was about me being too small.”

Jack hums affirmatively. He reaches out, hand positioned to land on Bitty’s arm, but he draws it back before he makes contact.

“And it’s not like that’s anything I’ll ever be able to change. I’m never going to get taller, and I’m not ever going to get much stronger. But…”

“But being small is something you can control?” Jack asks.

Bitty shrugs. “I don’t know. Let’s not do this right now. I don’t want to talk your ear off about all that.”

“I want you to talk my ear off,” Jack says. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to lie to me about this kind of stuff.”

Bitty frowns. That’s understandable, he supposes. They’ve definitely had their fair deal of struggles with communication, and even though they’ve found the answer is almost always talking to each other more, Bitty always feels like he has to resist it. It goes against his nature to tell Jack what’s bothering him.

“I don’t really want to do that entirely,” he says, “because I love you, but sometimes you hover a lot, and I don’t want to be dependent on you for walking me through this.”

“I don’t think that would happen,” Jack says. “And I wouldn’t mind, even if that’s how it was.”

“Yes, you would,” Bitty says. “Really, honey. You know exactly what I mean. You remember when I told you to call me whenever you’re feeling anxious, and you said you can’t?”

“Because it’s too much,” Jack said. “I’m not going to call every time because it would distract you from class. And usually I can call Shitty or Lardo or my mom instead, if I need.”

“Exactly,” Bitty says.

Jack sighs and he drops the rolling pin for a moment so he can rub his thumb against Bitty’s chin. There must be a spot of flour there. “I hate that I’m feeling this way,” he says. “But I don’t know if I trust you to reach out to someone else for help right now. That’s kind of your weak spot.”

Bitty can feel himself scowling. He feels spiteful again. He wants to snap at Jack, tell him off, not let him be this stupidly _caring,_ but he just doesn’t have the energy.

“I’m going to try to do better,” he says, and he means it. He just doesn’t know if he can, because he's been resisting that for a long time.  


\\_._/

He returns to practicing with the rest of the boys during the last week of fall semester classes. He also somehow manages to return to classes too, but that’s a whole other thing. He’s definitely behind on his thesis, but he’s always worked better on a tight deadline, so he’s pretty sure he can make it come together. His chances of passing the science gen ed are slim, but he has just enough room in his schedule to take another class that would fulfill the requirement next semester if he needs. By the time finals week rolls around, he’s feeling hesitantly hopeful that he might pass at least a few of his classes.

He’s also been to three meetings with his new therapist so far. They’d started somewhat disastrously and only gone up from there. Bitty supposes that’s the one upside of his mistep upon their first meeting, when he’d stepped into the small office, blinked at the woman sitting at the front desk with her combat boots propped up on the surface between a desktop monitor and a stack of paper. She has short hair and more piercings than most college students Bitty knows.

“Um, excuse me?” he asks. “I’m here for an appointment with Ms. Kelly Walker? Am I in the right place?”

“Oh, that’s me,” she says, springing up with a surprising about of pep for a woman who looks like she’s in her late 40s. As Bitty shakes her hand-- firm grip-- he notices a few tattoos peeking up at him where the wrist of her button-up sleeve has ridden up a bit. “Sorry about that-- I sent my secretary out on his lunch break. You’re definitely in the right place, as long as you’re Eric.”

His own first name is so foreign to Bitty at this point that he just stands there for a moment without letting go of her hand before he shakes off his confusion. “Oh! Yeah, that’s me. Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

“None of that, thank you very much. You can just call me Kelly,” she says, then turns and opens a door that Bitty hasn’t even noticed yet. “You’re a few minutes early-- I can make us some tea while we get ready to chat?”

And that’s become their little tradition, so far. Maybe she does that with all of her patients, but it feels nice to Bitty-- just catching up for a few minutes over hot drinks before they get into what they’re talking about that day. Sometimes she tricks him, even-- they’ll start out talking about how Nursey and Dex have been bickering again, and before Bitty knows it he’s been ranting about something that happened to him in high school and Kelly is asking him pointed questions about how that might still be affecting him, or about how the things he's been seeing about Jack and himself on social media have been making him feel.

It’s not easy, by any means. But she asks pretty good questions, and, well. She’s a lesbian, Bitty’s pretty sure, based on the photo of her and her wife that sits in a frame on her desk, and the way that she dresses. In some ways, she gets it-- she gets him doubting that his parents love him unconditionally, gets the guilt he feels, and the anger.

She starts offering him words to explain all of that. PTSD, for one, which Bitty still has his doubts about. Other things, too. He’s talked to Jack about a little bit of it, and the coaches about some other parts, but for the most part he’s keeping all of it to himself and thinking about things.

It’s a lot to think about.

\\_._/

They keep working at it. It's a slow process, but there are small victories along the way.

If there’s one thing that Bitty knows now that he’ll never forget, it’s the absolute certainty that he can love someone.

That had always been the harshest part, maybe, of never having a boyfriend when everyone else around him was dipping their feet into the world of relationships and dating and love. He could cry all he wanted about how it felt to go to bed alone at night and to crave just the tiniest of affectionate touches, but the real pain came from the slowly accumulating evidence that he was the problem-- not anyone else.

Maybe he was a sociopath, he had decided by the time he’d moved into his freshman dorm room at Samwell. Just incapable of feeling love at all, at least in a romantic way.

(He wasn’t sure exactly if not feeling love was a symptom of being a sociopath, but he had other symptoms too. For example, how badly he wanted to strangle his roommate whenever he blasted music through his headphones loud enough for Bitty to hear across the room when he was trying to get some sleep late at night before those awful, perfect checking clinics)

But now, while he still has his doubts about his own ability to maintain a relationship-- how quickly he let things slide this November doesn’t exactly boost his confidence-- he knows that he can fall in love. He might even stretch that and say that he knows he can love _and_ be loved, but his confidence in that is not quite absolute yet. But it’s getting there.

He knows he getting there when he jerks awake in the middle of the night on the weekend after finals week, a few days before he’s set to fly home for Christmas, and he watches Jack for a few minutes. He has some hazy memory of the nightmare that startled him awake, and he feels a little unsettled, but his heartbeat slows back to something resembling a normal pace as he takes a few deep breaths and reminds himself that he’s okay.

Jack already told him that he’s skipping his run tomorrow morning, so they can sleep in before they head to the airport to pick up Jack’s parents, who are flying in for the weekend to celebrate the first few days of Hanukkah. Bitty’s been a little bit worked up about getting the apartment looking perfect for them, even though Jack’s tried to remind him many times that it’s going to be a lowkey celebration, but, well. Bitty can admit he takes hosting holidays a bit too seriously sometimes.

Once his breathing slows a bit and his eyes have adjusted to the dim bedroom, he realizes that he’s a little chilly. He swears it’s those giant windows in Jack’s room-- they let in all the cold air. Thankfully, he does have his own personal furnace to solve the problem.

He reaches his hand out and gives Jack’s shoulder a gentle shove. Jack grunts but doesn’t wake up, so he does it again, and it’s now that Jack finally blinks groggily and Bitty, looking like a grumpy toddler who just got woken up from this nap.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Bitty says, then rolls against Jack’s side. “Hold me. It’s too cold in here.”

“‘S not cold,” Jack mumbles, but he wraps his arms around Bitty, a little awkwardly because that’s always a challenge when they’re both lying down, and buries his face against Bitty’s shoulder.

Bitty laughs and tucks his head against Jack’s, closing his eyes and settling in to sleep, much happier now that he’s pressed up close enough to feel Jack’s heartbeat and warmth.

He can love this boy. He can love.

He can.

  
He _can._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "In Bloom" by Neck Deep (listen to the Saxl Rose version PLEASE it's very important to me.
> 
> Listen, I wrote this because I relate too hard to Bitty. I think that's what it made it so hard to finish. I don't really have the answers yet, so it's a lot of speculation (and probably a few medical inaccuracies-- sorry!). Hope it feels right. He deserves to have better times. 
> 
> If you liked this, please please please leave a comment and also check out my other fics on here! I'm most proud of my paranormal camp counselors AU and my Samwell Women's Hockey AU! Also give me a follow over at @hockeydyke on Tumblr.
> 
> Finally, huge shoutout to Amelia for being my beta as always even though she was SUPER busy these past few weeks.

**Author's Note:**

> Bitty: Do you trust me to pick out a good costume?  
> Jack (thinking about short shorts): YES
> 
> Chapter title from "A Part of Me" by Neck Deep. 
> 
> The next chapter will be posted in about a week, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. Hope you enjoyed this first part-- please let me know what you think in the comments and check out my tumblr @hockeydyke.


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